What is IPE?

What is International Political Economy

Economic globalization has fundamentally changed the way we live: the way corporations conduct business, the way countries construct and implement their social and economic development strategies, the way engineers design products, and the role individuals play in the global economy.

New organizational structures are emerging: from regional-markets and regional-states in Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific, Russia and Eurasia, and Sub-Saharan Africa to the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and even the United Nations. New interlinked and interdependent global systems are being forged and are flourishing. Traditional paradigms fail to explain fully the complex realities of the contemporary world.

International Political Economy (IPE) provides new, integrated, and flexible ways of conceptualizing, analyzing, interpreting, and generalizing the contemporary world. IPE is an applied social science that builds on the theoretical, empirical, and analytical approaches and methods of political science, economics, sociology,anthropology, geography, and history. At Colorado School of Mines (Mines), the faculty combines both IPE and comparative political economy (CPE) to provide methodological flexibility and at the same time, breadth, depth, and diversity in our curriculum and research agenda.

“...IPE courses that I have taken at CSM significantly added to my understanding of and dealings with peoples. Working in a multinational environment of ARAMCO presents many cultural challenges and often clashes. I resolve them by drawing from the skills gained from the IPE Program.”